Page 19 - History of Portuguese in the Gulf_Neat

T
m • ■ &
;>

XXX INTRODUCTION. INTRODUCTION XXXI
panions is in a royal letter dated January 12th, 1591, in say that it seems evident that Teixeira had read the work
which the King writes1 to the Viceroy as follows :— (doubtless the Latin translation of 1599) before writing his ■s
own book.1 I would also point out, that though in 15SS
And he- also writes to me that of the three Englishmen who
went out to those parts in the time of the Count Dorn Francisco Teixeira and Linschotcn must have been in Goa at the ft •
r
Mascarenhas two of them were dead,3 and the other was in Goa same time, neither makes the slightest allusion to the other It
practising the profession of a painter, without there being any r
suspicion of any other design in him ; and nevertheless since it by name. Had Linschotcn not written his comprehensive
is forbidden that any strangers go to those parts, nor are they work on the East, it is possible that we might have had a k\
allowed there,* I do not consider it to my service that he remain, somewhat similar one from the pen of Teixeira. ■t *
being an Englishman, and you shall send him free in the first
ship to this kingdom that he may go hence to his own country if Though Linschotcn sailed for Europe from Cochin a
l-
he desire/' ’ '
couple of months before Fitch arrived there from Bengal, i
In view of the above royal instructions, it certainly
he did not reach Lisbon until January 2nd, 1592, nearly r.
seems strange that in 158s Fitch should have spent seven
three years after his departure from India;2 while Fitch,
weeks in Malacca unmolested, and that in 1589 he should Ik-
on the other hand, arrived in London on April 29th, 1591. 1
have stayed between seven and eight months at Cochin,
Less than three weeks before this there had sailed from I
and then gone to Goa and Hormuz; at either of which
London for the East3 three ships under the command of
places, one would think, he would certainly have been
Captain Raymond, only one of which, the Edward
re-arrested. But his motto seems to have been “ Dc i’audacc,
Jhmavcnture, Captain James Lancaster, was destined to i
encore de l’audacc, toujours de raudace.”
complete the voyage. The history of this expedition is
given in The Voyages of Sir James Lancaster, edited for
Two months after the departure from England of Ralph
our Society by Sir Clements Markham, It was perhaps
Fitch and his companions, namely, on April Sth, 15S3,
the report of the approaching departure of these vessels
there sailed from Lisbon for India a man whose name will
that led to the writing of a letter to the Viceroy of India
for ever be famous—the young Dutchman, Jan Huyghen
by the King of Spain on March 26th, 1591, in which he
van Linschoten. As the old English translation of his r
says4:—“I had advice a few days ago that in England ■
epoch-making Itinerario has been so admirably edited for
were being got ready some vessels with the object of going
our Society by Dr. Burnell and Mr. Tiele, I need here only £
to the island of Santa Ylena to wait for the ships that come
from those parts to this kingdom/’ The writer therefore
1 I translate from Archivo Portugucz-Oriental, fasc. iii, p. 277.
2 The Governor, Manoel dc Sousa Coutinho. f
3 I do no know who is responsible for this reduction in the 1 See the references to Linschoten’s work in the footnotes to the $ m:
numbers. Kings of Persia, infra.
■
4 Cf. Linschoten, vol. ii, p. 166. 2 He spent two years in the island of Terceira.
* Whether or not this order was carried out I have not been able to 3 Before this (in 15S6-S8) Thomas Cavendish had followed the
discover. If it was obeyed, poor Story probably perished in one of example of Drake, and circumnavigated the world by way of Magellan
the two ships that was lost on the homeward voyage in 1592 (see Straits and the Eastern Archipelago (sec the narrative of the voyage
supra, p. xvi). Had he been on board the Madre dc Deos, which was in Hakluyt, Prin. Nav., 1589, and the curious report of an English
captured by Sir John Burrough, there would doubtless have been a expedition to the East in 15SS recorded by Linschotcn, vol. ii, p. 302). t
record of the fact by Hakluyt or some other writer. 1 Archivo Portigucz-Oriental, fasc. iii, p. 317.